Productivity Knowledge Base: Avoiding rework

The costs of rework often go well beyond simply "doing the job times two." These costs include doing the original work, undoing that work, doing that work again, expediting parts and materials, handling wasted materials, reassigning workers, disturbing other finished work, coordinating with other trades, adding overtime to make up for schedule delays, and the inability to do income-producing work. On top of that, any equipment leased to do the work may need an extended lease. Think how much you pay to lease or rent lights, generators, lifts, cranes, and other such equipment. If you are using an outside testing firm and stretching their job out from three days to eight days, that’s an added cost, also.

Don’t forget the negative effect this has on the crews—nobody feels very motivated by doing a job over. Most folks, in the course of doing rework, have it in the back of their mind the thought, "This should not be happening. What a waste." And that thought is exactly right. Let’s bring it to the foreground of the mind, and look at how to prevent that waste.

Bill’s Project

To illustrate some principles, we can look at a job run by Foreman Bill. After we look at how Bill could have prevented rework, we’ll "zoom out" to see some effective strategies for preventing rework—strategies Bill’s company or yours can put into place. While Bill in this story isn’t real, your costs of rework very much are.

Bill’s crew ran power and communications wiring in a new office building. Unfortunately, the following things occurred:

The architect made some last minute changes in response to the owner’s change orders (sound familiar?). The electrical drawings didn’t reflect these changes. Consequently, Bill’s crew installed one transformer and panel right where an interior wall had to be built. This meant uninstalling/reinstalling that equipment and redoing the related busway and wiring.
The 480V/208Y transformers were of varying sizes to match different panels. John, who sets up jobsites with tools and materials to save the electricians time, delivered some of the equipment to the wrong locations. Bill’s crew installed "what was there." When the project manager asked why nobody checked the equipment against the drawings, Bill replied that the drawings didn’t have equipment specifications—all of that information was in other documentation the electricians didn’t have access to.
Bill was so proud of the job his crew did on the communications cabling that he took photos for the company newsletter. Unfortunately, some of the cables later failed testing—after all that work terminating and bundling them.

Preventing Bill’s Project Rework

An examination of the three items above can teach us some valuable lessons. To see the lessons, identify the strategies, and learn how to correctly implement the strategies, talk to us about doing a seminar at your location.

More thoughts on time management

The phrase "time management" is an unfortunate language quirk. You can't really manage time. It just is. You can't gain time, create time, or even lose time. Time is what it is, regardless of what we do. And, paradoxically, many common "time management" techniques and practices are timewasters because they divert limited resources (such as time) to the wrong things.

It would be better to say "time allocation" or "activity management" "time usage" or some other phraseology to indicate that it's not time itself you're managing but how you use the time that exists. But we'll use the common terminology here to avoid confusion.

Some things time management is not:

Being more efficient. Suppose you become very efficient at making buggy whips. Does this fact mean you are managing your time well?
Getting more done in a given amount of time. Getting more done of what? And to what degree of quality? If you rake the leaves on a lawn from one side to the other all day long, does that mean you are a good time manager?
Being able to juggle multiple priorities. Instead of juggling priorities, assign priorities. First tend to the urgent things, then the most important things.
Mastering multi-tasking. This concept conflicts with what we know about the human brain. If you buy into this self-defeating, time-wasting, quality-killing ideology, you might also be interested in practicing solo flight by flapping your arms frantically.
Working faster. No, this mode is how you make mistakes that you subsequently have to spend more time fixing.

Some things good time management involves:

Deciding what to do. This is trickier than it sounds. Which is why there are time management experts.
Deciding what not to do. This is even trickier than deciding what to do. Which is why there are time managers and why discipline is a huge, huge factor in accomplishing this.
Deciding what to do when, and in what order. In essence, prioritization.
Determining the scope, goals, and metrics for each activity you undertake. In this area, we the find most room for improvement. Precision here allows you to avoid waste on the one hand, and falling short on the other.
Planning out the work, task, project, or activity such that you determine the necessary steps to quality completion. That is, what must you do to meet the intended goal and quality metrics?
Identifying unnecessary steps. Get this right, and you can cut your wasted hours significantly.
Figuring out what resources to use. Not all resources applicable to a task are equal. Picking the right tool for the job saves time, improves quality, and makes life less stressful.

We've highlighted only some of the factors involved in good time management. We actually teach extreme time management, which is a methodology that allows you to make effective use of your time almost second nature. You don't need a complicated system. Our system puts many of the variables on autopilot, so you have more time to do what you need to do. Our system goes way beyond most other systems in results, yet is far simpler.

Contact us for a presentation to your organization: comments @ mindconnection.com (remove the spaces after pasting into your e-mail client's "to" box.